


What Was and Will Forever Be (The Ten Ghosts, One Cup Remix)

by kinetikatrue



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Carolina Hurricanes, Chicago Black Hawks, Gen, Ghosts, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Hockey Gods, Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Hockey Club, Montreal Wanderers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Stanley Cup, Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Victorias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinetikatrue/pseuds/kinetikatrue
Summary: The Hockey Gods - or fate - have chosen them for the world's longest road-trip. They don't get to pick the company, the itinerary or the music. There aren't any snacks or stretch breaks. And they're stuck wearing the clothes they started out in. If they weren't ghosts, he'd think they were in Purgatory, sometimes. But it's not all bad.Fred Higginbotham knows: you can adjust to just about anything over the course of a century or so.





	What Was and Will Forever Be (The Ten Ghosts, One Cup Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [What Is and What Should Never Be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5076643) by [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe). 



> This is not either of the fics I started out thinking I might remix, but it is the one that grabbed me by the throat and started shoving words out my fingers (to totally mix my metaphors), so I hope you find them compelling.
> 
> Thanks to A for the beta - any remaining errors of logic, history or grammar are on me.

Fred Higginbotham doesn't realize, at first, what has happened, when he finds himself suddenly in Mr. Nixon's study, watching Nixon's small son Stanley stare at Lord Stanley's Cup. /A pair of Stanleys/, his overwrought brain supplies. It's an amusing thought, in the midst of what Joe would surely call a tragic situation. Faced with a failing body, his fevered mind has succumbed to delirium.

His body is back at the Hall house, cradled in Joe's arms, while his mind goes wandering.

Watching Stanley watch the Cup is a pleasant distraction. The avid look on his face tells all the story that needs to be told: he wants to win the Cup for Winnipeg, himself, to be able to claim it as his. And while Lord Stanley's Cup has only existed for four years and its influence doesn't stretch very far afield yet, Fred can foresee a day when any young boy, faced with the Cup, would look the same.

He feels it a bit, himself, even in the midst of this reverie.

But then, the rapping of the door knocker brings him up short. Stanley freezes, clearly listening and preparing to bolt in the event the callers bring his father down upon the room. Voices murmur in the hall, and Fred can't make out much but his own name - but that's not a surprising thing for his brain to conjure up. Even at 15, Joe's steady enough to have thought to send someone to tell Nixon about his accident.

Fred, on the other hand, is curious to see what his mind will conjure up if he ventures out the study door and goes exploring in this dream version of Mr. Nixon's house - after all, if Stanley is anything to go by, he appears to be invisible.

He also, it turns out, can't turn the door handle, can't even touch it. If he's not trying to, his hand goes right through it. And more words are drifting through the door, /brother/ and funeral arrangements/ and /Ontario/.

It seems his brain thinks he's dead - and, well, it might not be wrong.

 

That's the Sunday night. Stanley slips away unnoticed in the ensuing bustle - and Fred's left to contemplate the Cup on his own. He discovers, when Mr. Nixon comes in and sits at his desk to write letters, leaving the door ajar, that he can't move much beyond the portico out the front of the house. On the Monday, he watches as a stream of visitors parade in and out: his fellow Vics turn up in a group, faces shadowed by gloom; Chas and Joe meet on the doorstep and share a heartfelt embrace, then compose themselves and carry on; and eventually a carriage delivers a particularly somber version of his brother, case in hand, brought straight from the station. There's a brief conference concerning the details of the funeral, a flurry of messengers sent out to points all over Winnipeg, and then his brother's departure for one of the Portage Street hotels.

Fred continues to linger - and somewhere in the darkest hours of the night he finds he can no longer avoid thinking it: he's somehow become a ghost, when the day before he would have consigned the idea to the realm of ballads and novels.

It puts him in mind of Tennyson, and the /Lady of Shalott/ - and trying to recite the poem from memory is enough to keep him occupied right up until the point when Mr. Nixon comes in again, the following morning, and sweeps out again with the Cup, dragging Fred along with him. He'd wondered why he'd been doomed to haunt the Nixon house; he'd clearly died at the Halls', and given his choice, he'd have chosen them, anyway. But it's not the house he's haunting.

It's the Cup.

 

And it's a particularly strange thing to attend your own funeral. Fred goes wherever the Cup goes, though, so he's there, in the bed of a wagon draped in black bunting, when a trio of ministers recite the Last Rites over his lifeless body. His voice goes unnoticed, for once, when he joins it with everyone else's in singing 'Nearer My God to Thee'. His ghostly heart twinges at the look on Joe's face as he shoulders the coffin along with the rest of the pallbearers. And when the hearse pulls away, bearing his body off to the train station, at the head of a massive parade of hockey players and Dragoons and dismounted bicyclists and what just might be every wagon and carriage in the 'Peg, the surreality of it all washes over him.

But the reality of it is that he's unlikely to ever be any closer to his body than he was this morning - some ineffable force has tied him to Lord Stanley's Cup, and it seems to him that that means that this is just the first of many occasions he'll accompany it to, unnoticed, but he doubts they'll ever make it to Bowmanville.

 

In the beginning, following Lord Stanley's Cup around means, for the most part, seeing a great deal of Montreal, as the Cup passes back and forth between its assorted teams. Oh, he has a few more months with the Cup in Winnipeg, and thus an occasional sighting of Joe - and there's a period of a little over a year when the Vics seize it again and defend it against all comers. But the powers in hockey still lie to the east, and while the Vics make a valiant stand, Fred can see the end coming long before it arrives.

The Cup doesn't usually attend games when they aren't Challenge matches, but there's plenty to learn about the state of hockey across the land just sitting in the offices of the men running the teams.

And there's always some hockey to watch, in the winter - no season would be complete without at least one Challenge - or to anticipate, the rest of the year. He might not have his guitar, but there's endless time for singing, and nobody to complain if he sings his favorite songs over and over and over again, though it's some time before he can bring himself to return to 'Nearer My God to Thee'. The world didn't cease to turn upon his death, though, so winter continues to follow autumn and lead to spring - and eventually the song comes to weigh less heavily on his heart. And in the meantime, the world around him is changing in a thousand unanticipated ways, while he can do nothing but observe it. If there's any kind of eternal truth to be gained from these years of ghostly observation - and he's not saying there is - it's that hockey players will always be hockey players, no matter the time or the place. 

It may not be an active life - he's no closer to lifting a hockey stick again after eight years of trying at every opportunity - but it's rarely a boring one.

 

That isn't to say that he raises any objections when a young gentleman, dressed in pyjamas, turns up out of thin air one day, blinking into existence while Fred's in the middle of yet another endless round of singing the Vics' team song, an ongoing protest of Ottawa's victory over Brandon the previous spring. He trails off in the middle of a set of 'rah's, struck dumb by the surprise of finally having company. Because there's no question that the thing he's missed the most as a ghost is his friends - chief among them Joe - and that haunting Lord Stanley's Cup has, at times, been a very lonely business, indeed. But that doesn't mean he'll be happy to spend the rest of eternity with just anyone.

He may like people - and they certainly liked him in return, back when that was a possibility - but there're a rare few he'd have picked for that, given the choice.

The new fellow - the new /ghost/, Fred supposes - isn't having any kind of problem making his feelings known. Moments after appearing in the arena lobby he's saying, "...what am I doing at Dey's? Last I knew, I was at home, in bed."

"You've been selected to be a member of the Cup's ghostly honour guard. It's a very select group." Fred's sense of humour is the most necessary thing he's taken to the afterlife, but he actually means it about the honour guard.

"And that, I would take it, means that I've died?" the new fellow asks, sounding remarkably composed for a man confirming his own recent death.

Fred nods. "I'm afraid so. Though the company /is/ welcome," and he certainly hopes it will be. And the best way to find out is to start as he means to go on and add, "Even if you might turn out to snore," just to see how the new fellow will take it

"Ghosts sleep?" He asks, tone exactly as skeptical as it should be.

And that is, indeed, somewhere to start, so Fred lets his smile show and tells him, "Unfortunately, no - and we're tied to the Cup, so there's really no escaping me." The words hang between them for a long moment, before Fred realizes he should add, "I'm Fred Higginbotham, by the way. And I'd offer to shake your hand, but..." As far as Fred knows, he won't have any more luck touching another ghost than he's had with the hockey sticks and every single other object he's attempted to handle since becoming attached to the Cup.

That wins him a smile - bright against the fellow's square, pale face - and an introduction. "Archie Hooper - and hopefully the absence of my actual brains means they'll stop being rattled." Archie sounds hopeful, at least - and not put off by Fred.

Fred's not predicting this as the start of a long and glorious friendship, yet - or anything close to what he had with Joe and Chas - but he's feeling a little hopeful, too. 

 

The company proves to be as welcome as hoped, though - both during the long stretches between occasions when the Cup gets trotted out for a Challenge match or some other event, and during those matches, as well. Until Archie appeared, Fred hadn't realized just how much he missed having someone to discuss all the hockey he played spectator for. It may not count as glorious, but there's a certain camaraderie and shared point of view building between them.

They certainly don't agree about everything...

...but when the Dawson City Nuggets come all the way from the Yukon to challenge Ottawa - a journey which the paper reports as involving dog sled, bicycle, train and steamer - they're united in wanting the Nuggets to win. Instead, the Yukoners lose badly, and then even more badly. There's a banquet after the second game - and food's probably the thing Fred misses second-most as a ghost - which of course comes with drinking, and thus, drunk hockey players. And for some reason (Fred never does find out why), the Ottawa players leave it possessed with the damn fool idea of drop-kicking the Cup across the Rideau Canal. They don't succeed - it clatters to the ice smack-dab in the middle - and then they just up and leave it there and go home their warm beds. 

"Not that we need to - or even /can/ - sleep, as we've already established," Fred says grumpily to Archie, once the last player straggles away.

"Or feel the cold," Archie replies, in kind. Obviously in agreement with Fred on the subject.

"But there are many, many places I would far rather spend the night, than the middle of a skating canal." Dey's would be acceptable, for instance - and, hell, he'd even accept a return to Montreal.

"But it's the canal for us - and all because those bastards of supposed hockey players decided they couldn't handle a little ice." If Archie sounds a tad vicious, well, he'd been teammates with many of the fellows on the Wanderers squad that lost a Challenge to Ottawa the year before - and Ottawa hits to hurt.

There's nothing for it, however - the Cup won't be retrieved until the following day, and before that happens, they have the pleasure of spending an entire morning dodging the many skating members of the Ottawa public.

The best thing that can be said about the situation they find themselves in two years later is that at least The Lake of the Woods is a nice change of pace from the /cities/ (he hasn't seen the 'Peg in five years). And that nobody actually manages to launch the Cup anywhere this time. But it's beginning to seem like /everybody/ wants to try throwing the Cup /somewhere/.

"Next thing you know, somebody'll be trying to throw it over Niagara Falls," Fred predicts, on the train ride back to Montreal.

 

Of course, they'd only been in Kenora, in the first place, because back in January, when the Thistles challenged the Wanderers for the Cup, Montreal had still been finding their equilibrium after a typical game against Ottawa. It wasn't a Challenge match, so Fred and Archie hadn't actually seen the action, but they'd heard all about it - plenty of people had been more than ready to recount all the highlights of the game, complete with righteous anger over the way one Ottawa player had 'laid Hod Stuart out like a corpse' with a head-shot, all within their hearing.

Not that that was unexpected, when it came to Stuart - except, perhaps, in degree - everybody, everywhere was gunning for him, while claiming that he was the one who played too roughly.

He certainly can't claim any surprise when the news reaches them that Stuart decided to retire at the end of that season. They hear about the offers various teams make to him, trying to lure him back, too - Canadian hockey is a small, gossipy world. Fred and Archie have a running debate over the rumour of a team making an offer fit for a railroad president - if railroad presidents played hockey - but if it's true, it's apparently not enough to lure him back.

They're definitely not expecting it when he turns up and joins /them/.

To be fair, they don't recognize him at first. Fred's first thought, when Hod blinks into existence, towards the end of a warm afternoon just past the summer solstice, is that he doesn't envy the fellow a bit, between his bathing costume and the gruesome head wound. It's June, and they don't have much else to do besides watch the days grow longer and longer - and then start contracting slowly again - so there'd be no missing him even if he'd been a bit less memorable. 

Anyway, he's looking looking around their most recent destination - the business offices of the Montreal Arena - with obvious confusion.

"Tried to break your fall with your head, did you?" Fred asks, because they've got to start somewhere, and there's no point standing on formality when they've got an eternity in each other's company ahead of them. 

"What..?" seems to be all the fellow can manage, once he's turned his head enough to get a look at Fred and Archie, where they're perched together on the wide window-seat, the better to watch the world outside the house go by. There's telling whether he means 'what are you doing here' or 'what the hell is going on' or even 'what am /I/ doing here' - what's a good, general-purpose word, and it covers most of his bases that don't require a 'why'.

Like 'why in god's name are you dressed like that?' - which is a very good question, indeed. The longer Fred spends as a ghost, the more he thinks it might just be a cosmic joke.

Whichever it was going to be, there's no telling, because Archie apparently did the math and realized that he had a duty, as a former member of a rival Montreal team, and that was to call their newest arrival to account and ask, "How could you /let somebody plant flowers in the Cup/?"

And that's about when Fred realizes who's come and joined them now - and decides that he'll figure out how he feels about sharing eternity with one of the best pros in the business later; it's not as though he doesn't have plenty of time to work it out.

 

In 1914, Lord Stanley's Cup stops being Canada's alone. Officially. Fred thinks - and Archie and Hod agree (they've talked about it plenty) - that nothing's changed on a metaphysical level. Whatever force it is that causes them to haunt the Cup, well, there's something Canadian about it. And some guy declaring something different isn't enough to change that.

Hod's been with them for seven years at that point, and Fred's long since decided that he's perfectly amenable to the idea of spending the rest of eternity with the fellow, given the fact that he's a calm, sensible person, who appreciates (or at least doesn't mind) Fred's singing or his stories.

It's been three years since either Ottawa or Montreal had control of the Cup - and they've enjoyed seeing a bit of other parts of Quebec, and of Toronto. Professional hockey leagues are claiming the right to challenge for the Cup as theirs alone. And that's just what's been changing in the world of hockey. Everything else appears to be changing, as well. Music keeps evolving: the hymns and traditional songs of Fred's youth now share space with something called Ragtime. The horseless carriage has come to the masses - and humans have taken to the sky. Fred wishes he were alive to try it all, properly.

Instead, he just gets to fight Archie and Hod and the Cup for space in the rear seat of the occasional horseless carriage - and he has trouble imagining them ever getting the chance to fly.

By the end of that decade, planes have demonstrated their use in war, but Fred still has trouble imagining the Cup ever being entrusted to one. They may be able to get off the ground, but they're finicky, and prone to falling out of the sky at the least provocation. Cars at least stay on the ground, but even they can't top the comfort and pleasure of traveling by train, in Fred's opinion.

Archie says, "But cars can go anywhere."

And Hod replies, mild as milk, "The car carrying the Cup in the parade in Toronto could have been bigger."

And that's the kind of thing that occupies their time right up until the world plunges into war.

When they come out the other side, there's another fight to be had: epidemics of influenza. They can't be killed a second time, of course, but all of them still have living friends and relatives, people who matter to them. And while they, the all of them, can attest to the fact that death isn't the worst fate to be had, that doesn't mean they've any desire to encourage people to join them.

They've spent two pleasant (albeit rainy) years on the west coast - one each in Vancouver and Seattle - as a result of Cup wins, when tragedy strikes the third championship to be played out there. Seattle is hosting, once again - they're playing a Montreal team called the Canadiens, newly of the NHL - and influenza has hit BC and the Pacific NW hard.

The Victoria team has already borne its brunt.

And playing for the Montreal team is Joe Hall, Bad Joe - Fred's bosom friend of his youth. Fred has had other glimpses of him over the years - in Kenora and Montreal and Quebec City - and followed news of his career any way he could, in between. Death was hardly enough to sever that tie on Fred's end.

But now it seems as though death's sickle is poised above /Joe/'s neck.

That might just be Fred's sense of a good story talking, though. Nobody on either of the Seattle or Montreal teams has fallen ill. The series is tight and exciting - it goes into the fifth game with Seattle leading 2-1, after a scoreless tied game four - and from the talk in the offices, the odds being laid are in Seattle's favor, but not hugely.

When Montreal wins the fifth game, tying it up, well, expectations for Game 6, to be held on April Fool's Day, they're a big question mark, at least as far as Fred's concerned.

The following day, they're there when the officials learn that influenza has come for the Cup final. Montreal has been hit hardest, with five players in sick-beds, fighting high fevers. Four more go down the next day, gutting the Canadiens roster. And while the April Fool's game doesn't get officially cancelled until hours before puck drop, none of Fred, Archie or Hod are surprised that it does.

The decision goes that late because the Montreal coach first attempted to forfeit - and had the idea rejected by Seattle - and then attempted to borrow some of the only recently recovered Victoria players, to no better success. 

Then it's a waiting game, with Joe's life hanging in the balance. Gossip says he's fighting, but of course he's fighting. And eventually that isn't enough, it turns out. So, Joe joins them wearing striped pyjamas - and fresh from his hospital bed. There's something of the little boy to him, still - at least in Fred's mind - despite him technically being the oldest of them all. But mostly he just seems tired.

Fred can't quite believe what he's seeing, can't manage to say anything but, "Joe?" They knew Joe was ill, knew almost his entire team was, but Fred never even thought to hope (or fear) that if Joe didn't survive, he'd join them.

But here he is, dead, when the last time they saw him, he was alive and on the ice.

Joe had been staring at the Cup, but when Fred says his name, he turns towards Fred's voice, and he smiles, and says, "Fred," like it's the best thing he's ever said.

And maybe it is - saying Joe's name again was an amazement for Fred.

So, the four of them are there, in the room, when the decision to abandon the rest of the 1919 Stanley Cup Final on account of influenza is made. It's truly a deadly serious call being made. But there's no telling when the rest of the Montreal players will be well enough to play again, and there's no holding onto hockey season.

So the Cup final of 1919 goes down in hockey history - and in Fred's own personal one - because of an influenza epidemic.

When Georges Vezina takes his place amongst them, they're not expecting it. They had expected him to die, yes - his dramatic collapse and wasting illness had been the talk of les habitants rivals for months - and, of course, knew who he was. But surely the hockey gods had intended him for hockey Valhalla?

But in the end, the answer is obvious: he had been no more ready to play his last game than any of the rest of them, still gripped by the loss that capped off his last season, an unfitting end to a worthy record.

Beneath the unflappable facade, le Concombre de Chicoutimi is at least as passionate as all the rest of them. And if that weren't enough to make him truly one of them, well, he'll be spending the rest of eternity wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms and a Habs sweater. In his bare feet, with his pipe perennially clutched between his teeth, he's as human as a ghost can be.

Team pyjamas gets another member with the arrival of Charlie Gardiner. But his entrance is most memorable for the fact that the first words out of his mouth are, "Oh, I'm dreaming about meeting Vezina again."

Georges replying, "It's not a dream," serious as anything, leaves him momentarily gape-mouthed.

But he rallies quickly, says, "I suppose I finally died, then." And, well, he clearly didn't captain his Black Hawks to a Cup for nothing, since he's here. 

They spend most of the intervening two months, before Jack 'Newsy' Leswick turns up, stuck in a windowless office in the bowels of the Chicago Stadium. And Charlie is a welcome addition, between his way with a tale and his pleasant baritone. It certainly could have been worse, in Fred's experienced opinion.

He's dressed in street clothes - an ordinary pair of trousers and a shirt - the first of them to manage such normality. His shoes give a ghostly squelch every time he moves, though - eternal evidence of his not so peaceful passing.

"Well, if I'd known I was going to get to keep company with the Cup, afterwards, I wouldn't have worried about dying at all," is the first cheerful thing he says, upon appearing next to it. "I suppose I don't mind sharing."

And then, when he notices Charlie, "Cap! Never thought I'd see you again. And, boy, do I have a story for you..." The tale involves the perils of having integrity - and how that can lead to you swimming with the fishes.

Fred is surprised to discover that Winnipeg is now home to the Mob - but, then, it has been nearly forty years since he lived there; that's plenty of time for just about any kind of change to occur.

Georges isn't precisely cheering the drunken Habs fan's actions, but his silence is almost approving. Joe definitely smiled when at the man's muttered ranting

/The Hawks can't have it. It BELONGS in Montreal. It does. I'll take you home. Promise./

Jack and Charlie are a bit more vocal, to the tune of /Police! We're being robbed. Literally. The Hawks are winning fair and square, asshole./ and, because Jack apparently can't resist, /you'll never get away with this!/

There's nothing any of them can do to affect the outcome of the drunken heist, though, so they're left to trail in the wake of the Cup along with the rest of us, while the thief stumbles towards the doors of the arena and right into the arms of the police officers on duty outside.

Afterwards, Jack says, smugly, "I was right."

And Georges replies, placidly, "We will win it again, rightfully, soon enough."

Barilko arrives in plaid and khaki - singed plaid and khaki - a day or so ahead of the news that he's missing. And he alternates between being philosophical about the whole thing - what an epic way to go out, and at least he went out on top - and raging against the injustice of having his career cut so short, only five seasons in.

When the authorities completely fail to find the site of the plane crash, and by extension, his body, he quips, "Now I'm guaranteed to go down in history."

There's a certain truth to that, at least in Toronto - after the glut of glory, to the tune of four Cups in five years, the team achieved while Bashin' Bill was alive, the following decade has a pall cast over it by the Leafs' uninspiring performance. It's probably not a curse - though, who knows? They're ghosts, so it's entirely possible that curses are real, too.

Or maybe not - when the Leafs next win, the year Bill's body is finally found, they manage to throw the Cup into a bonfire in the course of celebrating the win, and that isn't the end to that era.

Fred is watching Vezina, as he often watches Vezina, because there is so much to see in the minute changes to his expressions. Just now, he has laid claim to a corner of of Patrick Roy's pool deck, and is sitting there, perched on the low wall, occasionally taking a pull from his equally ghostly pipe. He shows no surprise when the victorious - and hugely drunken - members of his former hockey team decide to repeat the Pens' experiment of two years previous and send the Cup for a swim.

It still doesn't float.

But commentating the throw - and comparing it to the Pens attempt - isn't bad entertainment when you're doomed to eternal sobriety at yet another Cup party.

When the kid shows up, they're all a little disconcerted. Oh, they know /who/ he is - the Cup, and by extension them, moves in the kind of circles where the supposed 'next generational talent' is bound to come up a time or two or twenty - but he's not even old enough to be drafted, let alone play for the Cup. What he is, is pissed off, and doomed to spend eternity dripping ghostly water from his waterlogged gear.

He certainly doesn't seem inclined to talk.

Fortunately, Newsy can talk enough for an entire team of hockey players - and Fred is no slouch in that department, either. Georges is a reserved kind of guy, but the things he does say are always worth waiting for.

They'll work him into the mix, eventually - they've done it with everyone else, even Steve, despite how he died - he might be a generational talent, but he's still just a person, same as the rest of them.

Fred can say with certainty, that while some of their number think the Keepers of the Cup could stand to worry a little less, all of them are fond of them. So, when they find themselves stranded by the side of the road, courtesy of a spot of car trouble, en route to Quebec City, they all feel some sympathy for the Keeper on duty. Help will probably arrive eventually, but there's no telling when.

And in the meantime, it's April, in Quebec.

At least the kid's lightened up a bit, even if he still sulks for a while every time a team he disapproves of wins the Cup. But then, they're all a bit partisan, and the web of their loyalties and enmities is complex enough to put the kind found in nature to shame. That's hockey players for you: stubborn enough to keep a rivalry alive, even unto death.

It does take a good long while for the Keeper to flag down a ride - but they can keep themselves entertained just about anywhere at this point, and they were already deep in a quasi-argument about the pleasures of Quebec City, so that's them sorted in the interim. Fred doesn't have terribly much to contribute - he never experienced the city as anything other than a ghost - so he has room to think /if the drivers could see us, we'd be waiting even longer/. They make quite a motley, disturbing collection on first viewing, Fred knows, even if he's long since grown used to that. 

In the end, of course, it's the bonds of hockey that save the Cup, in the form of a hockey family in an SUV.

And that, in due course, leads to ten ghostly hockey players being squashed into the cargo compartment, perching on gear bags, as close as they can get to the Cup, where it's riding in the backseat, without trying to occupy the same space as the human passengers. Even as ghosts, they're almost all of them strapping young men - and while taking an elbow to the ribs can no longer be properly said to /hurt/, there's a special ghostly discomfort to it. Whatever ghostly bodies are made of, it doesn't like sharing space any more than actual flesh and blood, with flesh and blood or with anything else.

There's a metaphor in there, somewhere, for all of this, Fred thinks - Georges might be able to tease it out if he mentioned it, or maybe Jack, but Fred figures on storing the thought up for later, for one of the many times sure to eventually come, when they'll retell the story of this day and a new angle to it will offer some relief. There's an art, after all, to surviving eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things I changed up, while remixing, was who was going to end up haunting the Cup, because I'm me. So, all players named in this fic are real - and, aside from Sidney Crosby, died in exactly the way and under exactly the circumstances described. The Cup's misadventures are also true in their generalities, if not all their particulars.
> 
> Anyway, if you got this far, then have some links:


End file.
